The six-second video with "adult content", which widely circulated pictures showed appearing under a warning screen, was promoted less than a week after the service launched.

Twitter blamed human error and said the video has been removed.

A spokesman said: "A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor's Picks, and upon realising this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologise to our users for the error."

Photographs circulated on the social network showed a video posted by a user called NSFWVine - seemingly a reference to the "not safe for work" warning some Twitter users use when posting risque content. With "editor's pick" in the corner, the cover screen said: "Warning. This post may contain sensitive content. Tap to view."

Vine, which was launched last Thursday, is an app that lets users of the social network post very short films from their mobile phones.

Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief executive, posted footage using the software through his @DickC account, showing him making steak tartar in a video that resembled gif-animated footage.

Twitter's vice president of product, Michael Sippey, wrote on his blog: "Like tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine (six seconds or less) inspires creativity."

Twitter issued a further statement saying: "Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video. Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the user account that posted the video may be terminated."

The Vine Rules, posted at http://vine.co/terms, add: "All content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person who originated such content. We may, but are not required to monitor or control the content posted via the services (the website and app) and we cannot take responsibility for such content. Any use or reliance on any content or materials posted via the services or obtained by you through the services is at your own risk."